Live data from Hacker News

VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

github.com

11–20 of 120 posts

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#11
post #7
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's more about telemetry than licensing.

Doesn't it suffice to set the following in your User Settings? "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false Honestly I'm very happy to give telemetry data. Microsoft is doing so much to improve the experience, they can make it better with some data.

This doesn't suffice unfortunately. That setting has worked inconsistently, or not at all, and add far as I've seen in my own testing it never disables all telemetry. There have been issues open on GitHub about this for a long time, though it's a few months since I checked there for updates (I stopped bothering and just put it in my firewall rules; I still see blocked connections in thy log today).

I'm a very happy vscode user, but this is one antifeature does continue to bother me.

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#12
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's more about telemetry than licensing.

AFAIK telemetry can be disabled with "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false

isn't it agains't GDPR having it be like that?

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#13
post #2

I don't see the beneficial element to this project. Visual Studio Code is opensource, free of charge and used by millions at this point, why would anyone want another license just because of the license alone?

If there's people that use Chromium binary builds, there's people that will use this.

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I think this would be rather useful to have. I don't use VS personally, but if I understand correctly their binaries are not free even though users can build their own from a free source code. If this "VSCodium" simplifies the building process, and also removes some anti-features in the process such as telemetry, I think it has value.

? VSCode is definitely free in the "beer" sense.

Sorry, I mean "free software" I wasn't talking about price.

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it suffice to set the following in your User Settings? "telemetry.enableTelemetry": false Honestly I'm very happy to give telemetry data. Microsoft is doing so much to improve the experience, they can make it better with some data.

This doesn't suffice unfortunately. That setting has worked inconsistently, or not at all, and add far as I've seen in my own testing it never disables all telemetry. There have been issues open on GitHub about this for a long time, though it's a few months since I checked there for updates (I stopped bothering and just put it in my firewall rules; I still see blocked connections in thy log today). I'm a very happy v…

It really is annoying that they don't make it opt-in instead. They've got plenty of users; I can't imagine they need to be collecting usage statistics from everyone.

I'm curious what would happen if a moderate-size country (say, Belgium) were to pass a law saying that telemetry must be opt-in. I bet it would convince everyone to just be universal opt-in for simplicity's sake.

That said, I bet it's still nothing compared to the level of data collection that a typical website does these days.

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? VSCode is definitely free in the "beer" sense.

Sorry, I mean "free software" I wasn't talking about price.

Ah gotcha! Apologies, then. I probably should've read a little more closely.

Re: VSCodium: Binary releases of VSCode without MS branding, telemetry and licensing

#20
post #2

I don't see the beneficial element to this project. Visual Studio Code is opensource, free of charge and used by millions at this point, why would anyone want another license just because of the license alone?

Exactly. I like the idea of having VSCodium as an option but I don’t have an urging need to use this fork since just removing a license and telemetry endpoints doesn’t really add any value compared to the official package.

Removing telemetry adds a lot of value. To each its own, I guess.
Post reply on HN